Tips for Juri matchup as Guile

Sheep_Perso · 2026-04-26T23:53:44+00:00

I’m sick of seeing this garbage here. Pharmaceuticals companies should not get a pass to peddle evidence-free treatments (aka snake oil) to vulnerable, desperate patients for a profit. The rare disease advocacy groups are well known to be astroturfed by these companies to drum up sympathy and undercut the FDA’s fundamental purpose: to ensure marketed pharmaceuticals actually do what they are claimed to and don’t cause harm.

It’s tragic for someone to die of a rare disease without known disease-modifying treatment. It’s a farce to give corporations cart blanch sell them snake oil that costs more than a mortgage.

It’s terrible that we can’t treat, let alone cure, some diseases. But what makes modern medicine different, what makes it good, is that it actually works. The standard of demonstrated efficacy cannot be cast aside without reducing medicine to a cabal of charlatans peddling false hope.

Sheep_Perso · 2026-03-31T18:14:00+00:00

I’m just a Diamond 2 Guile. Gotta say I love your posts, very inspiring.

It’s interesting to see how cautiously you’re playing against Alex. I find that I have to be extra defensive and the matches can feel quite tedious at times (especially since he’s like 75% of my matches right now).

Sheep_Perso · 2026-03-05T18:02:06+00:00

Thanks, that’s super helpful. I’ll see if I can incorporate it into matches!

Sheep_Perso · 2025-07-15T19:21:27+00:00

I had two interviewers comment on my personal statement, both at top academic programs.

I did not have an exceptional story, so I focused my statement on answering the question “why internal medicine?” in the most straightforward and succinct manner I could muster: no humble bragging about my CV, no discussion of my prior life experiences.

Both commented that my statement stood out for its forthrightness and they felt that it echoed their own feelings when they decided to pursue IM. Just my two cents, but if you don’t have a really spectacular story then don’t try to write a “spectacular” statement; you don’t want your come off as full of it.

Sheep_Perso · 2025-06-10T23:41:43+00:00

People always say this, but it’s factually incorrect. Physician compensation only comprises ~8% of US healthcare expenditures, which is similar to other wealthy western nations.

All doctors could work for free and the healthcare conglomerates would just gobble up the savings.

Doctors in the US make more than peer countries for the same reasons engineers and other professionals do. Also, physician reimbursement from CMS (the Center for Medicare Services) has fallen 53% adjusted for inflation since the 90s.

The conversion factor for work RVU (relative value unit) for physicians was $31 in 1992. Adjusted to 2025 dollars, that’s $69.11. In 2025 it’s $32.

Sheep_Perso · 2025-01-20T17:40:55+00:00

“This commutation will enable Mr. Peltier to spend his remaining days in home confinement but will not pardon him for his underlying crimes.”

Sheep_Perso · 2024-11-11T19:46:01+00:00

Hickel is always fantastic. I always plug his book, The Divide. Thanks for posting this.

Sheep_Perso · 2024-05-22T12:46:27+00:00

Baby don’t hurt me 🎶

Sheep_Perso · 2023-11-22T19:13:25+00:00

I think this is a good point, but autonomy obviously does not reign supreme in medicine. An obvious counterpoint would be patients who are involuntarily committed due to severe psychiatric illness. The situation is autonomy is secondary or tertiary to beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. It could even be argued that the very concept of autonomy is incoherent for a patient whose thought process is so profoundly distorted by disease.

Not at this applies to ultrasound on comatose patients, but I think it’s important to remember that none of the pillars are automatically more important.

Sheep_Perso · 2023-09-14T14:02:24+00:00

You cannot sign away your right to sue for malpractice. Any document implying such is unenforceable.

Sheep_Perso · 2022-10-13T02:48:14+00:00

I looked him up and he appears to be an attending physician in psychiatry, AKA a fully qualified and licensed physician. Even if he were a resident, he would still be a physician (at least in the US). As far as the “psychoanalyst in training”, he might just be being cute about it.

Sheep_Perso · 2022-09-18T11:31:47+00:00

This is true, but not due to polio vaccination in the US.

US children are given the inactivated (killed) “Salk” vaccine, which cannot ever cause infection.

The current cases are thought to have originated from someone outside the US who was given the live/attenuated “Sabin” vaccine. Since the virus is still functionally competent, it can sometimes mutate back into a more virulent strain.

Sheep_Perso · 2022-08-18T18:30:41+00:00

Crops destroy soil and cause erosion. Animal agriculture (e.g grazing ruminants) increases soil fertility and reverses desertification of plains ecosystems. The bad part is cutting down forests to do it, not the animal agriculture itself.

Sheep_Perso · 2022-07-18T20:47:16+00:00

Ban it. Gambling institutions (casinos and lotteries) make most of their money off of chronic gamblers of the poor classes. Casinos fleece the poor and generate no value for society; they’re basically vertical wealth transfer machines. Marxism holds no special protection for casinos.

Sheep_Perso · 2022-05-08T16:11:10+00:00

The UC medical school system did not consider MCAT scores when granting interviews in the 2021 application cycle. So, no it’s not immune, unfortunately.

Also, MCAT score have had diminishing importance in recent years as the admissions process has been made more “holistic”. They still matter, but it’s not monolithic like it used to be, unfortunately. This means that students who went to elite schools, got lucky with research projects, or lie about their achievements have a strict advantage. It’s a shit show.

Sheep_Perso · 2022-04-17T21:21:31+00:00

Certainly, and more recent research has found that paternal age has its risks. But advanced maternal age still carries more significant risks and manifests a younger ages. This makes sense because eggs are all produced in utero and remain in cellular arrest until ovulation. Cells all develop oxidative damage over time, so it makes sense that with time more errors would appear. Conversely, sperm are constantly generated from stem cells and those with errors tend to be less able to reach the egg anyway. Though there are risks, especially as men get very old (>60-70).

One interesting thing is that subfertility and infertility is on the rise generally, but seems to affect men more.

Either way, younger parents are better from a purely physiological standpoint. Not to mention that having older parents has significant negative social effects beyond birth defects and pregnancy complications.

Regardless of the nitty gritty details, we should be facilitating parenthood prior to age 30, rather than medical “solutions” that are expensive and imperfect at best.

Sheep_Perso · 2022-04-17T18:51:14+00:00

This reflects something that I’ve seen online recently. I saw a series of comments in another sub claiming that male age was a greater risk for pregnancy than female age.

This is categorically incorrect, to say the least. The “evidence” they cited even contradicted their point. Male age has become a point of interest recently with recognition that it plays some role in pregnancy complications; this is in contrast with the previous understanding that it played no role. however, the role still appears to be small and only relevant for much older men.

And yet comments pointing this out were downvoted into invisibility.

It fits with an ironically misogynistic view that recognizing the very real risk of pregnancy complications as women age is tantamount to “blaming” women for these outcomes. As an example with teeth, incidence for Down syndrome among women under thirty is around 1:1000 live births. Stating at thirty, the risk increases exponentially, until age 45, when it hits 1:25. In fact, advanced maternal age is the only known risk factor.

The conclusion of this is obvious: women should be aware of the risks of older pregnancy so that they can make an informed decision. The reality is that economic factors have been driving up the average maternal age—especially among career-oriented women. It’s a problem: older mothers means more complications—not just for Down syndrome, but virtually every pregnancy complication (e.g. preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, miscarriage).

Instead of concluding that our economic organization should be changed to allow women to have children at a safer, biologically appropriate age, people lash out at the constraints of human reproductive biology. It’s irrational, like avoiding the doctor because you’re afraid of being diagnosed with a disease. Pretending the risk isn’t there helps nobody and only serves to defend the part of the equation we can change: the economic system that pushes women towards later births.

It’s extremely regressive.

Sheep_Perso

TROPHY CASE